Natalya Says She Was Inspired By Cody Rhodes To Do Lowkey Legend Character

Natalya recently went more in-depth on the origin of her Lowkey Legend character and credited Cody Rhodes for being part of the inspiration. The WWE star has reinvigorated her career by competing outside WWE at GCW, NWA, AAA and more. The character outside WWE is Nattie Neidhart to differentiate from her Natalya persona. She spoke on What Do You Wanna Talk About? With Cody Rhodes about the character and more. You can see highlights below:

On Breaking Out Of Her People Pleaser Mindset:

“So when I was about halfway through the book, I realized that I was living a lot of my life over the last probably two decades of this tightly-woven childhood trauma where I was just trying so hard to be what I thought everybody wanted me to be. And I I kept on thinking like, even when I was trying to get to WWE or I was trying to make characters work. I was like, ‘What would they like, or what would the audience like, or what would my opponent like. What would make the girls happy in the locker room?’ Maybe this will make them happy. This will make them like me more, this will make them–‘”

On Being Inspired By Rhodes:

“About halfway through the book, I had this epiphany that I needed to just take a chance on myself. And it’s funny, because I was saying to TJ the other day about [Rhodes]. I said, ‘You’re a really big inspiration for me.’ Because you had so much courage to take a chance on yourself and your dreams and to do s**t that was crazy.

“If people go back and watch and look up some of your indie stuff, you did some crazy stuff. I mean, physically crazy stuff where it was in front of nobody. I’m not sure if there was much money involved or anything. And you were putting yourself out there and reinventing yourself in a way that was — you just took this crazy chance on yourself

On The Book Inspiring the Character:

“The Low-Key Legend character, it came from the book. It came from me reaching a point in the book, and that’s why the book has got so much range in it. It’s very funny, but it’s also very deep. And there’s a very deep story in it where I just kind of reached a breaking point personally where I was like, ‘Are you going to spend the rest of your career just trying to be what you think everybody wants you to be? Or are you going to take a chance and be who you really are?’

“And it was so easy for me to dive into that role. Because that role really stemmed from the work that I did in The Dungeon when I was first learning how to train. And my first everything, it was in The Dungeon. My first lockup, my first drop kick, my first bump, everything was in The Dungeon. And I always knew that girl when I first started, she was just gritty. She had that Stu Hart grit.”

On Deciding to Do Bloodsport:

“A couple weeks before WrestleMania, I was feeling a little frustrated. I felt like I was lost. I was like, ‘Where do I fit in?’ Because I knew that creatively, Hunter wanted to find something, he wanted to find something for me where he wanted it to be meaningful. We had talked about finding something meaningful. But sometimes that takes time to find that.

“And so I just decided, ‘You know what? You got to basically — you can’t just wait, Nattie. You got to take the bull by the horns.’ So I got to talking and talked to Josh Barnett and said, ‘Bloodsport was what I did in The Dungeon. The Dungeon was Bloodsport before Bloodsport was Bloodsport.’ And Josh and I have trained together, I know Josh very well. Josh believed in me and said, ‘Absolutely, let’s do it.'”

On Pitching It to Triple H:

“He stopped, he made the time for me. He listened to me and I said, ‘I would love to do Bloodsport, and it’s during Mania weekend.’ He said, ‘Sure.’ He goes, ‘I love it. Let’s do it. Absolutely.’

“I had anxiety that morning. I was saying to TJ ‘What if he doesn’t want me to, or what if they don’t let me, or what if they…’ Again it’s, ‘What if, what if?’ Like no, it was just taking a chance on myself. He said yes, and then I was like, ‘Now I’m going to get to work and I’m going to make this [work]. I’m going to blow this up so that like, this is what I want to do and I’m not going to ask. I’m going to show them.'”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit What Do You Wanna Talk About? with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.